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| Waygooks on tour. |
Last weekend I joined up with the Waygook Travel company and headed south to Gwangju
and onto Mokpo for the 4th Korean Grand Prix. I’ve been a fan of F1 since I was
13 so this was massively exciting – my first Grand Prix!! And yes, Jen.. I know
you’re reading this and loling… You can skip this first part if you like. F1
isn’t for everyone...
The trip was great. It took about 4 hours to drive from Seoul to Gwangju including a pick-up in Daejeon and a couple of rest breaks. Not bad at all. We went straight to the track so only checked into the Love Motel later Saturday night. Qualifying
on Saturday was pretty much what we had expected with Vettel on pole followed by
Hamilton and Webber. Webber had his 10 place penalty for hitching a lift back to the pits on Alonso’s car at the Singapore GP a couple of weeks ago so that
dropped him to 13 and shuffled the rest of the pack up one space.
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| From 9 up to 10. Good overtaking. |
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| Between turn 8 and 9 |
After qualifying we headed to the motel and 40+ of us then went for Korean BBQ – delicious. I got talking to a Hawaiian couple who were in Korea on holiday and a British guy in his 20s called Kieran who was on vacation from China where he works as an IT Project Manager…
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| Pre-race Korean dancing |
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| Black Eagles |
The race on Sunday was full of everything I
wanted. Overtaking, spins, a car on fire, safety cars, battling for position… I
loved it. In fact the least entertaining aspect of the race was Vettel who just
paraded around the track in the lead without anyone seriously challenging to
take it from him. The drive of the day for me was from Nico Hulkenberg who had
to work hard to fight off challenges from Hamilton, Alonso and Rosberg to secure that
career best 4th place finish. As well as the
racing there was a K-Pop concert and an air display by the Black Eagles.
I got back to my apartment in Seoul just
after midnight knowing that Monday would be a struggle (it was) but happy to
have my first Grand Prix under my belt. I’ll certainly be going to more!!
Tuesday was Open Class.
I think this is the closest Korea gets to Parents Evening. The parents can come
into your lesson and sit at the back whilst you teach. Most parents will go to
their child’s homeroom class so they can talk to the teacher afterwards about
how they’re doing in school generally. But for those parents who’re
particularly interested in their child learning English, they will come to my
lesson. Oh, as well as the school principal..
So, I made special effort… I brushed my
hair (rather than the roll-out-of-bed mental patient look I usually have going
on) and dressed smarter than usual. I got to school and did my best to keep
Seunghee as calm as possible until the lesson started at 1pm. I've never seen her
so stressed before. She’s usually very calm…to the point where she often naps
the afternoons away.
I made a short video (above) with Seunghee and some of the students to use at the start
of the lesson. I also made a Car Race game and a Spy game with animations and
music. Everything went great! We had picked our best behaved Grade 4 class and
they seemed to really enjoy the lesson.
Seunghee promptly fell asleep immediately after
the class – I think it was the stress!!
Biking update:
I’ve cycled. A lot.
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| Sunny day for cycling |
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| Crossing the Han |
1) My first route was… a mistake. I had unintentionally
cycled 13 miles in the wrong direction before I stopped and checked the map. I
cycled back pretty pissed off with legs (and arse) FULL of pain.
2) A few days later I cycled a circular route,
about 12 miles, to check out where I’d gone wrong. It was an easy mistake to
make.. The bridge I should have crossed the stream at was much, much smaller
than expected and pretty overgrown with trees and bushes… Excuses.
3) The third route was a monster. Mainly
because Katie and I had decided it was a good idea to cycle to a 2 hour
football session that was about 12.5 miles away…and back again. Unfortunately,
during the session I pulled off a save by doing the splits – not a natural
position I find myself in – and I did some damage to my right hamstring. In my
infinite wisdom I thought it was OK to cycle the 12.5 miles home, rather than
get on the subway, just to “stretch it out a bit”. A mile would have been OK.
12 miles was ridiculous. And that last 0.5 nearly made me cry.
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| Football Session |
A week on and I’m still giving my leg time
to recuperate a bit but yesterday was (another) national holiday “Alphabet Appreciation Day”, and a group of us headed back to the bike shops where two
more people bought bikes. Got a little bike gang forming!
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| Crimson and Blue |
Other sporty things I've done since I last blogged include attending a huge varsity game between Korea University and Yonsei University - two of the top 3 universities in South Korea. Every year these two universities play a series of matches - football, baseball, basketball, rugby and ice hockey - and the winner of 3 of the 5 games is crowed champion that year. I was there supporting Yonsei (purely because Yonsei's colour is Royal Blue and KU wears crimson - I don't own any crimson clothing) who were eventually crowned the 2013 champions! Huzzah. I saw the rugby and the football but to be honest, most of the crowd weren't there for the sport... they were there to sing and dance and chant along to there school songs. It was the weirdest and most bonkers sports atmosphere I've ever been in!...Short video here to illustrate my point. This singing and dancing was none stop through both games. 3+ hours. And everyone (except the foreigners) was sober. Incredible!
In other news: I'm off to Global Gathering on Saturday – a
dance music festival. Sunday I will recover.
Until next time,
Bren.
.JPG)
